Guestbook

UNIQUE SPIRIT SPACE

Sarajevo

History

The city of Sarajevo has been the site of three seemingly unrelated major events:  World War I began there; the city was the host of the XXIII Winter Olympic Games; and today, it is a shattered center of ethnic conflict as Yugoslavia divides into separate states.

Why have these events taken place in Sarajevo?  Located at a cultural crossroads between West and East, Sarajevo’s history has been determined by its ethnic geography, by the presence of its three major ethnic groups and the relationships among them

The area of present day Sarajevo has a long and rich history dating back to the Stone age, when the Butmir Culture flourished in the area. However, little material evidence of this is available, mostly due to later construction. Several Illyrian settlements existed in the area before it was conquered by Rome in 9 CE. During Roman times, a town named Aquae Sulphurae existed on the location of present day Ilidža, a Sarajevo suburb to the southwest of the city.

The year usually mentioned as the city's founding is 1461, when the first Ottoman governor of Bosnia, Isa-beg Ishaković, transformed this village cluster into a city and a state capital by building a number of key objects, including a mosque, a closed marketplace, a public bath, a hostel and the Governor's castle (Saray) which gave the city its present name (see also: Etymology of the Name of Sarajevo). Sarajevo flourished in the 16th century when its greatest donor and builder Gazi Husrev-beg built most of what is now the old city. By the late 17th century, Sarajevo was the most important city in the Balkans after Istanbul.

In a raid led by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1697 against the Ottoman Empire, Sarajevo was burned down and leveled. The city was later rebuilt, but never fully recovered from the destruction. The capital of Bosnia was transferred to Travnik. In 1878, Bosnia was occupied by Austria-Hungary, and Sarajevo was quickly brought up to the standards of the industrial age.

In the event that triggered World War I, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Following the war, in the kingdom of Yugoslavia, Sarajevo was the capital of the Drinska banovina, one of the country's chief provinces. After World War II, Sarajevo grew rapidly as it became an important regional industrial center in Yugoslavia. Modern city blocks were built west of the old city, adding to Sarajevo's architectural uniqueness. The peak of city growth occurred in the early 1980s, when Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics.

On April 6, 1992, Sarajevo was surrounded by forces of Bosnian Serbs. The warfare that lasted until October 1995 resulted in large scale destruction and dramatic population shifts (see Siege of Sarajevo for details). Reconstruction of Sarajevo started as soon as the war ended, in 1995. By 2003, most of the city had been rebuilt, with only a few remaining visible ruins in the city center. Modern business buildings and skyscrapers have since been constructed throughout the city.